Domodedovo is a great airport. Rationally organized. A surprisingly good Indian restaurant (Paprika). Giant portraits of Great Leader Zhirik. What more do you need?
Here’s what you don’t need: Belgians and 2 cm of snow.
Brussels Airlines was too cheap to even shill out for separate room, instead packing all the stranded passengers in a hotel atrium and kicking them out at 7:30. Which was a slight problem, since in Belgium nothing opens before 8:30 or so.
Well, no reason not to explore Brussels in the chilly early morning. It struck me a fairly typical historical European city, with its fair share of famous historical figures (e.g. learned that Mercator was a Brussels native).
Still, the self-confident bourgeoisie of yore has clearly given way to a diskempt socialist decadence.
Graffiti everywhere. I mean, it’s normal to have it at train depots or disused warehouses in the outskirts, as in most places I have been to, but it’s quite another issue when it begins to infest central, historical/tourist areas (e.g. see the wall right on the photo above).
Favorite example was a giant drawing of a dick that was right in front of what I was told is a Catholic girls school.
From talking to a local friend, getting on welfare is easy (as I recall you just need to do 1.5 years worth of work) and pays well enough to live in reasonable comfort, indefinitely. Taxes for the middle class approach 50%.
Property is really cheap for what is the capital of one of the world’s major power blocs.
Around 600 Euros / month for a two room apartment on this quaint historical street just 2km from the central seat of EU power, and perhaps around 250,000 Euros to buy.
This is comparable to Moscow, and about 3x cheaper than in London.
Demographically, Brussels struck as significantly more white than London, though less so than Moscow. Foreigners were strongly tilted towards Blacks and North African Muslims. No surprises there.
The Africans openly sell weed in the streets, and you encounter wafts of it almost as often as in Berkeley.
The above photo shows the Monument to the Congo Pioneers, built in 1921.
The inscription “L’héroïsme militaire belge anéantit l'(Arabe) esclavagiste” [Belgian military heroism annihilates Arab slavery] has been scoured of its politically incorrect ethnic component, though amusingly, it appears that some enterprising Belgian shitlord had graffitied in the prior cultural vandalism.
Completely ordinary, totally not trying to prove anything at all, poster on a Brussels street [click photo for high-res].
… Since when do Africans read?
My friend, you might know Africa, but you don’t know the Africans. We are big readers, especially of the word and of comics.
This strange Euro-SJWism is promoted from the very top, e.g. the European Parliament had a massive banner commemorating Simone Veil, who played a key role in legalizing abortion in France before transitioning to other progressive causes.
Some of her very great quotes:
Europe has to be an example of democracy and respect for human rights.
What I want as a woman… is to not be forced to fit the male paradigm.
Today, a new commitment must be made – to fight against hatred of others, anti-Semitism, racism, and intolerance.
Overall, I cannot say I was very impressed with Brussels after spending a day there.
It lives up to its reputation as a socialist dump.
That said, a few things in its favor:
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A quaint sense of humor, with lots of funny/silly little monuments all over the place.
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Great beer.
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They love their dogs.
Perhaps it is slander, but according to books about world history, king Leopold proved himself in the Congo, worse than the worst Arab slave owner.
No, it is largely true. What is omitted nowadays is that his gendarmes and soldiers were almost exclusively black (his high ranking officers and commanders were white), so the genocide or near genocide (it was certainly a genocide in the colloquial meaning, “very bad mass murder, with number of victims usually in the seven digits or more”) was largely committed with the participation of locals. (Though, the same thing could be said of the holodomor.)
On the other hand, it must be noted that the Belgian military or government or state had nothing whatsoever to do with this mass murder, because the Congo was King Leopold’s private kingdom, and it was transferred to the Belgian state and made a Belgian colony only after there was a scandal in Belgium about the treatment of the locals. The king eventually agreed to transfer his private land to the government in exchange for forgiveness of his debts. (His debts were then transferred to the Belgian treasury.) So I don’t think it’s a stain on the Belgian military. But it is a stain on the king, and perhaps on the Belgian monarchy as well.
OT
Is Smoothie your friend or your ally? Or both? (Okay, don’t remove him from the blogroll.)
I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, too.
I concluded that “Frenemy” could exist as a category on the blogroll.
Brussels is one of the worst capital cities in Europe. It somehow manages to combine at the same time all the worst of old, traditionalist Europe, with the worst of new, dystopic Europe.
No comparison to London – which very interesting as a city and can explore for days.
Hey Anatoly, it would be very interesting if you made it a point to check out some of the other major Russian cities. Places like Rostov, Voronezh, Nizny Novgorod, Kazan, maybe even some of the Siberian cities. I always wonder how they compare to Moscow or other cities in Europe. Have they fully modernized and shrugged off the Soviet era or are they still considerably blighted. I hear such mixed info on that subject.
Belgians are pathetic. They love their dogs because they don’t have children anymore. It will be Muslim along with most of the rest of Europe. Then forget the craft beers, the cathedrals, the artwork and music, etc.
I was in Brussels some years ago now, but I didn’t have as bad impression of the city, though it is hardly on my top 10 list. Maybe because I lived with friends in the (lily-white) suburbs with leafy parks nearby, so I got to see another side of it with only interspersed visits to the city center. Brussels has nice architecture and I personally enjoy cities with architecture that is without large and needlessly open spaces with just grass on them.
Still, ultimately a city is only as good as its demographics. Warsaw is easily one of the ugliest capitals in the developed. Yet it is safer and in many ways more fun, at least for a local native, than many far richer and frankly more beautiful cities. I felt the same when I was in Prague (outside of the tourist traps). You could walk into any bar and just talk to the locals. There seemed to be a greater companionship, even for a bigger city, than what I’ve found in the West where everyone’s not just a stranger (which is normal for large crowds) but the alienation felt far more palatable.
I think what works against Brussels is that the city is dominated by two groups, to go back to my original point about the importance of demography to any city. On the one hand, you have the 3rd world rabble who are increasingly rapidly. On the other, a ton of white expats/foreign workers, all feeding in the EU machinery. These are uprooted from the place in every sense of the word. In that sense, I suppose it makes sense that they work for a supranational organisation like the EU, but it only re-inforces the point.
Ilya Varlamov has the funniest blogs for this topic.
Although he is a hipster, he has some blogging talent.
He writes a ‘good’ and ‘bad’ article for all his holiday destination.
E.g. Kazan:
Bad
http://varlamov.ru/1329591.html
Good
http://varlamov.ru/1328795.html
His blog on Ufa – criticism of pavements led to condemnation from the local government.
Bad
http://varlamov.ru/1316723.html
Again
http://varlamov.ru/1317512.html
Good:
http://varlamov.ru/1318237.html
The love of grey paint
http://varlamov.ru/1396072.html
OT
Hungarian SJWs FTW!
It was quite a long time ago when I was in Brussels but I remember seeing lots of restaurants with halal and mediterranean food, and I remember musing, “But does Belgium have any traditional cuisine of their own?” It really surprised me then to see a menu written in Arabic.
I also remember being profoundly disappointed that the “capital of the EU”, which I felt had to be something like the “capital of Europe” didn’t feel grandiose in any way; nothing like Paris or London or any of the country capitals, all which had its own feel and atmosphere.
It just all felt very bland, like an giant organ of white collar bureaucrats. Its odd, that in the many years since then, I think this is perhaps first time I’ve actually even thought about that trip because it was so forgettable.
The cities with ‘less alienated’ atmosphere, are mostly in Southern Europe – for example, in Spanish cities (away from tourist traps). You immediately feel a more friendly atmosphere, with people out socializing and in cafes going on through all non-winter months. I agree it does not have so much to do with whether city is – beautiful or ugly. Although there is component of intelligent urban planning which they do best in Southern Europe (where they make plazas and mix together shops, cafes and houses).
“At the moment, I don’t much like being Hungarian. In recent years I’ve started feeling that my nationality resembles a nasty skin disease that I want to scrub off. When I’m abroad, I hide my accent and I call myself a “world citizen”. I’ve vowed never to have a Hungarian boyfriend, or even to settle down in my own country. I hate the fact that much of the world now believes Hungarians to be intolerant and longing for authoritarianism.”
This is the Champions League of SJWism! With such quality liberalism, I’m now really proud to be a Hungarian! Have Slovaks or Romanians ever had such SJWs? I bet no! We are the best!
She’s too timid to say outright that she thinks that being white is a skin disease.
I bet you are just envious.
Hungary! Hungary!
Brussels has a combination of alienated Arab immigrants, combined with typical French urban dirtiness and rudeness. It’s not a mix I was a fan on.
I’ve only passed through for a day (carrying my luggage around), but I would not go back (and you can buy a box of Leonidas chocolate everywhere nowadays) .
Brugge is a different world though, very worth visiting and with less of this Northern France atmosphere.
I’ve read King Leopold’s ghost. My hot SJW sophomore english teacher gave me her dog eared copy to read.
I’m quite skeptical of its claims. Ten million dead? In a colony with no more than a few thousand whites with no infrastructure of any kind? Even the Germans only managed six million.
Many of the claims read like abolitionist torture porn, and made by the same kinds of people. This part of the general genre of equating European colonialism with the Holocaust. Another example is the book Late Victorian Holocausts.
Let’s not forget that the author Adam Hochschild is a mischling.
Your observations comport with Robert Putnam’s research. He found that not only does diversity lower trust, but even lowers trust within groups.
It’s somewhat better in America (despite more diversity) owing to lower density and greater segregation, but you feel it all the same. In the hinterland and whiter cities (Portland, Austin, many state capitals and university towns) people don’t feel like strangers, whereas in the cosmopolitan cities everyone does, even the white people
Chicago is something of an exception to this since the segregation is so intense and most of the whites are from the Midwest itself. On the north side near the lake you can go without seeing non-whites for a significant stretch of time.
Manhattan keeps getting whiter and as such may one day feel less alienating. It’s about 60% white now by residency, but feels much less so owing to all of the non-white menial workers commuting in daily.
OT: Speaking of the advancement of AI. NBF covered the rapidly approaching time when you can feasibly have perfectly generated “evidence” which would be completely fictitious thanks to AI.
People make great hay out of the fact that the AI experts themselves are quite skeptical when polled about the emergence of AGI.
Two counter-points:
First, we may not need an all-encompassing AGI before we start seeing revolutionary change. AI can be segmented but still extremely disruptive in niche segments. Add enough niche segments and the cumulative effect is very large.
Second, I recall reading that when the experts in the 1990s were polled about how long it would take to map the human genome, the overwhelming majority opted for “many decades”. The human genome was sequenced in 2000 by Craig Venter. The wisdom of the experts, even when crowdsourced, is not always a great indicator.
Obviously it is hard to make any predictions. All one can do is to note the stunning advances in the last 5 years and to ask if it is reasonable that it continues. Given the explosion of AI funding, the explosion of AI papers and finally the explosion of new AI researchers in the pipeline, all coupled with the launch of many new DL-specific hardware start-ups, it is hard to be bearish.
As for the social/legal implications of the technology… they are massive, of course. Not only will those with a high net wealth have access to top lawyers, as they do now, but increasingly even the ability to fake testimonials and it will be very hard to disprove whatever testimony they want to push.
From a more paranoid/tinfoil perspective, a state can now find easy justifications for kangaroo courts against high-value target citizens it wishes to persecute, it just needs to generate it. I doubt the MSM will be very hard on the state, given how craven the “free press” typically is to the government on all important issues to the state.
Precious, the ‘world citizen’ de jour. In Slovakia we have them too. We also have the peripatetic in-and-out people who live abroad and come back for ‘visits’. First days they are full of stories of how horrible London (Paris, Brussels, …) is, how they fear the demographic there. But that quickly switches to the usual contempt for their own country, mocking the natives, and speaking bad English to each other (rather painful to listen to).
Their self-contempt is a form of boastfulness and self-affirmation, they are truly lost souls. The Hungarian woman above is quite typical – what she is really saying is that she can never accept who she is, that she wishes to be someone else, and how sad it is that might not be possible.
I agree the ethnic diversity adds to alienation and unpleasant atmosphere in many cities in West Europe, particularly ones like Brussels or parts of Paris.
But I don’t agree with your idea that American cities are less alienated than European. I think it is the opposite. American cities are highly alienating. And reason is endless suburbs, malls and driving everywhere, with no feeling of center, little public transportation, and no attention for pedestrians.
America is obviously a great country to live in and American life-style is very high level overall.
But the city planning, driving everywhere culture is – unpleasant, and the cities have unmistakable feeling of alienation in them as a result. There’s more than one pathway to creating an alienating city life.
It boggles the mind that she’s paid to basically write a livejournal entry of “how I feel and you should know that I am hot and I’ll never fuck one of you..us…you…something!”
Which is a loss to us all, I’m sure.
http://earthjournalism.net/directory/kata-karath/image_preview
Thanks for this although I don’t read Russian. The photo collection is amazing. What an incredible architectural mash up Kazan appears to be!
OT
Have you guys heard of the hilarious story of the campaign video of a Hungarian cabinet minister? The video was made in a bad immigrant neighborhood of Vienna, and he talked about how horrible it is, full of immigrants.
The Austrians protested, including the mayor of Vienna, and I think the mayor’s spokesperson said that Vienna is not only safe but it has one of the highest quality of life in the world.
Then a few hours after the uproar there was a knife attack on a random family in an elite neighborhood of the city and later on a random Chechen individual some distance away by a vibrant Afghani.
I really wish I had as much luck as this minister.
The video itself was by the way censored by Facebook after a few hours of being uploaded.
I remember talking to an Indian student who had traveled quite a bit throughout Europe and some in the US and he said that he felt most at home in Club Med for precisely the reasons you mention.
He dryly noted that most Indians end up in Anglophone nations out of a combination of A) linguistic convenience B) pre-existing diaspora support networks and finally C) a greater share of technology jobs, especially grunt work for H1B visas and its counter-part.
However, culturally and socially, Indians are not at all like the Anglos or the North Europeans. They are much closer to Club Med, and I’d even say closer to Arabs than, say, Spaniards.
Southern Europeans tend to have café culture. It is not unusual for people to sit at cafés well into the night and just drink coffee or a drink of some sort and just chat away. Social life is just more fluent and natural there. People don’t need to get shitfaced drunk to be social. Maybe the better weather is a factor here. It’s just too cold in most EE and NE to casually sit in cafés at 22.00 on a Tuesday and chatting away in late March.
You see this in the drinking culture too. No beer-addled boozefests with all of its plebbish bingedrinking “culture” for them. No, alcohol is enjoyed as part of a greater culinary tradition. Drinking wine at a casual family dinner is seen as socially acceptable and in fact normal.
I prefer working with North Europeans but socially, Club Med are just superior. Poles are more social and family-oriented than, say, Germans but we’re still too close to the Northern European binge-“culture” for my taste. I’d much prefer moving in a Spanish direction, while rejecting some of the lazier Spanish habits (siesta, for one) which I view as negative. But that’s a tangential note.
I don´t think anybody outside of Hungary – except maybe people near the border in neighbor countries – could identify a “Hungarian” accent.
Hadn’t read about the video, just about the knife attack…which is pretty disturbing. Apparently the perpetrator claims the was frustrated and dissatisfied with his life…so he just stabs a random Austrian family (the father is still in critical condition). I guess the social services in Austria just didn’t do enough for him.
Yes I agree with this. South West Europe often more advanced in this sense – with less violence in the streets, more personal safety, more relaxed and friendly atmosphere, and more urban planning oriented for pedestrian life.
An example – is to see Sevilla:
http://www.heute.at/politik/news/story/FP–und-SP–entsetzt-ueber-dieses-Video-aus-Wien-55084720
Yes, London has an impressive and growing variety of mosques, clusters of Muslims trying to convert or intimidate, and hundreds of restaurants and shops and streets where you can feel unsafe and unwelcome.
I no longer have the desire to explore London for even one day. It is rapidly going the way of Brussels, Paris, Stockholm, Hamburg, Vienna, and other suicidal European peoples’ cities and cultures.
I enjoy reading your Polish Perspective on this and other issues. I visited Poland once, about a decade ago, and was struck by the beauty of the women and the architecture 😉 as well as by the more normal, happier, more family-oriented, less brainwashed, non-self-hating attitude of the locals.
You point out characteristic qualities and tendencies of the various European peoples. We had them all here in the USA, gradually knitting together, and it worked wonders.
Before the USA opened the floodgates to Mexico and the rest of the non-white world, we were a wonderful country in part because we had a great mix of every kind of European person North, West, South, and East (with some white Americans, like me, having genes from each of the European regions).
We had plenty of genetic and cultural “diversity” that blended into what WAS becoming a steadily advancing and increasingly unified pan-European society — with differences big enough to be useful and interesting, but not so big as to present too much tension and unbridgeable divisions in society.
Despite being alt right, I was frankly shocked when I visited Paris. The amount of black people was appalling. Paris would quite literally be better off today if the Germans had won the war. Some victory!
I suppose I was commenting specifically on racial diversity or racial alienation.
Geographically, you’re not wrong–though older cities in America built when rail and horse transportation were dominant are geographically pleasant. Chicago, New York, Boston, etc.
Wealthy suburbs linked by rail to the city such as Greenwich, Connecticut or Wilmette, Illinois are likewise pleasant.
And it goes without saying that the countryside is pleasant. I have lived in a rural area since 2014 and it was is low stress. Social capital is high though the local proles have their downsides (trashy, coarse, embarrassing). Most days I see no non-white people whatsoever other than my Indian intern (and yes, he is going back to India). Unfortunately red indians come to town on weekends to shop at Walmart, but at least they’re traditional to America.
True hell is cities that grew mostly after the war and basis their transportation net on “street hierarchy” and practice strict single use zoning segregation. Atlanta comes to mind.
Until Germany really opened the doors to millions of un-screened Arab, African, and Muslim invaders over the past decade, you would have been hard pressed to claim that Spain or Italy or “SW Europe” was safer than Germany. Hardly.
Now it’s just a race to the bottom, to see which formerly white European countries can become the most dangerous, most impoverished, and the most subjugated by aliens, the fastest.
Agree with you, though, about the need for walkable city centers.
It was quite a long time ago when I was in Brussels but I remember seeing lots of restaurants with halal and mediterranean food, and I remember musing, “But does Belgium have any traditional cuisine of their own?”
French fries.
Well this is where my attitude diverges strongly. London is one of the ‘eternal cities’ and could not be avoided for mere political reasons.
Some parts like you say are like an Islamic Sudan, or like Saudi Arabia (including rich areas). Others have an influence Poland (you hear people speaking the Polish language in the streets, hurting my ears a little). You have to avoid some of the Eastern badlands side of the city or the outskirts, or South of the river Thame.
But in general it manages to hold both the very grand capital function like in Moscow, but with an almost Mediterranean street atmosphere in many parts. Some of the most impressive art galleries, and museums containing all things British imperialism looted from peoples around the world. Enormous amounts of wealth. Also a lot of young people and quite a youthful atmosphere.
Of course a lot of people hate on it, like a lot of people hate on Moscow. But from any objective sense, it is very interesting place.
I guess Wallonian cuisine is an extension of French cuisine. So it must be delicious. Flemish cuisine, probably not so much.
Is sitting in a traffic jam in Moscow less alienating than doing so in the USA?
USA is pretty diverse in terms of lifestyle. It has large cities with public transportation such as New York, Chicago, Pittsburg, Boston. Smaller cities are suburban (in the USA, only college towns have living downtowns in the USA) but traffic isn’t so bad in them. Average commute in a place like Rochester NY is 19 minutes. There are rural areas also. They are easy to live in for Americans, everyone has comfortable cars and such.
“Endless suburbs, malls, driving everywhere” would describe some specific places like Dallas, Houston, LA, outer Atlanta, outer Chicago, Long Island, maybe Detroit. Most of America is not like that.
I work in a large practice owned by a Cuban guy. I notice at office parties the eastern Europeans and Latinos tend to mix in one group, the Anglos in another, a reflection of compatibility.
But even if they could, how would she hide it? “Accent” just means you try hard to sound like a native but it’s difficult and you don’t succeed. Does she try harder? It’s simply idiotic. Everyone tries to “hide their accents” by trying to speak like a native speaker. Obviously with varying levels of success.
Is Moscow your metric for everything? You have claimed here that they live three times worse there, so maybe some alienation is in order.
But, I must comment on the Boston subway – what you referred to as ‘public transportation’. Have you ever been on the ‘Green Line’ in Boston? It is basically a slow-moving coal carriage with 4-5 very confusing parallel lines, very low ceilings, smell and filth everywhere. When I saw it I thought I was back around 1910, and there has been no maintenance since then. NY and Chicago are slightly better, but really only slightly.
No, US with a few minor exceptions has no ‘public transportation (Washington seems ok). That is alienating by definition. Compared to that even Brussels humdrum metro is quite good.
(I guess, you are and I will not agree on much :).
I’ve been on the Boston system, nothing special. My mother lived on one of the last stops in a leafy green area; it was very comfortable to take the subway downtown.
Chicago’s is dirtier, especially the red line with the rats on the tracks.
Moscow’s metro shuts down at night, these ones don’t. In Chicago there is a direct line from the airport to downtown. Not in Moscow (though overall Moscow’s is far better, probaly best in the world).
New York’s is fine.
Most Americans don’t want to live in places that would enable efficient public transportation: they want their own houses, yards, and cars. It’s a choice. Accordingly, most Americans live in places where they don’t sit in public transportaton but drive to work in 20 minutes or so. They socialize with their neighbors, friends or family, have block parties sometimes, etc. Alienating? How often to people make new friends on public transporation? The norm is to avoid eye contact and read or something.
The Tatars run the city – what do you expect?
And you can still go see the Christian churches of Constantinople. Sure, there may be some imam in there mumbling something in Arabic, but you can still look at the architecture of one of the eternal cities of Christendom.
When people go to see a place like, say, Egypt, they expect to be looking at pyramids and other relics of a past civilization tended to by the different people that live there today. The reason London and Paris are so shocking today is that they were still within living memory world leading imperial capitals and tourists don’t expect to be visiting ruins inhabited by people unrelated to the ones who built them. Yet they’re half way there and it’s easy to see how with current trends it will not take many generations for England to go completely the way of Egypt – when you visit London in the future you’ll get some brown Muslim tour guide to show you the relics and give you a lecture about the customs and beliefs of the Englishmen that once lived there.
A “choice” highly assisted by one of the most dysfunctional infrastructure construction/regulation systems imaginable.
There’s always been a place for at least some type of public transportation, such as high speed rail between cities and where I live, something like that has been discussed/researched/funded for over ten years now and I believe thirty years from now, someone will come up with the idea again.
I guess Wallonian cuisine is an extension of French cuisine.
For the French there is nothing particularly “French” about French fries (“frites”) and they associate them with Belgians. “French fries” are a staple of Belgian jokes (i.e., jokes at the expense of Belgians).
Sir Roger Casement’s report on the Congo Free State was pretty damning, and it was certainly believed by well informed people at the time, including colonial administrators.
BTW Hochschild’s title comes from a spectacularly non-PC poem by Vachel Lindsay:
Listen to the yell of Leopold’s ghost
Burning in Hell for his hand-maimed host.
Hear how the demons chuckle and yell
Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.
Here is a vaguely on-topic joke, from the colonial era:
A Congolese visits Belgium and takes a train to Brussels.
After a while he asks a fellow passenger: “Where is the jungle”?.
The passenger replies: “In Belgium, there is no jungle”.
The Congolese looks puzzled and asks: “But then where do the Flemish live”?
It’s an interesting question – although not directly related to my point, which is to say it isn’t city to avoid for mere political reasons.
London has been excessively internationalized, which has damaged it in a way. That’s fair point.
And as tourists, we miss something, as the destination loses some of original charm and authenticity for us, as we go on holiday there to visit England – not Saudi Arabia, Russia, Poland, Barbados or China. .
But is this kind of internationalization comparable to conquest of Constantinople, or sacking and overtaking by a foreign army – and then the humiliating situation of how modern tourists now go through indignity of patronizing the descendants of the Ottomans who destroyed it?
When Russian elites (or Saudi elites) flood into London, they are doing it precisely because it is under British rule, and governed the UK property law. The British are obviously benefiting from this petro-dollar recycling – and the issues with property and company law, is how London has most wealthy law industry in the world. The people who lose out are the normal-income citizens in the petrodollar countries themselves.
London has flooded certain other districts (especially East of the city, or South of the river Thame), with cheap labor from their ex-colonies in Jamaica or India. And more lately, with cheap labor from EU – Baltics, Poland, even Spain and Italy.
And the professional industries in such city are flooded with professionals from the EU (France, Italy, Germany, etc).
The areas flooded like this by people without interest in assimilation, have an appearance of being invaded by people from those places, some of them bringing very dangerous ideologies (i.e. radical interpretation of Islam).
But there are more differences than similarities to actual invasion, as the British elites hold the keys, and are beneficiaries of the cheap labor. professional labor from EU, and of aforementioned investments from the wealthy foreigns who park their money in London (and who do it only because of it being government by British law).
Another key difference of an internationalized city to a conquered city, is fact it is not taken over by single culture, but has many cultures governed under the ruling one.
In London’s case, you can go to Russian restaurants if you want. And the next day, you can go to an Arab smoking room. Or a Chinese one. And if someone takes your money, or doesn’t deliver on a contract – you are protected by unparalleled quality of British law and civilization.
The liberal New Statesman had a hilarious travel piece on Belgium and Brussels a few months ago that argued that Brussels was a pleasant dystopia. It fits well with what Karlin has reported. Its parting words:
Sure, but realistically mass transit needs a dense population. You’re not going to have a dense population if every family has a house, a large yard for the kids and the dog to play in, etc. And that’s what most (American) people want. Now that Russians have more money and more freedom to spend it, suburbs have started appearing in Russia, too.
I wouldn’t take Moscow as the example to use to compare with general America.
Moscow is alpha city (world city), and in the US – only New York, Chicago or LA are considered on a similar level.
In this case, Moscow’s transport infrastructure is of course infinitely better to LA, but perhaps not to New York (and that’s not to mention unparalleled summer demand on roads, of everyone rushing to their country cottage at the weekend, which I don’t believe is as common in New York).
The example of Los Angeles – shows how American cities can be as dysfunctional as many cities in Russia. I was travelling in Los Angeles last summer, and it is one of the worst planned cities I’ve seen. Even in the Middle East, they do better urban planning than this.
http://www.nmhc.org/Content.aspx?id=4708#LargeCities
Given how many of the major cities have about 1/3 apartment residence, I think the idea that every American has a house, large yard, etc to be more than a bit fantastical. Car ownership, especially having dual car ownership, rapidly can be something that is forced in order to continue to operate in any reasonable manner in the States.
I spent about a year and a half without a car, it was pure misery. I also think this understates the amount of social interaction that is improved in Europe through the creation of stations and their attendant “train streets” that spring up around them, serving as small cultural hubs.
At any rate, in the situation I described, it did not really need dense housing. It was simply would have been a high speed rail link between two major cities; it was competing not against cars but against the airport, and pretty much all of the numbers would have worked out.
I certainly agree about LA….
Boston, Ma was the most disappointing city I’ve ever visited. Just Steel and concrete. Harvard Yard was so detached from its surroundings that it didn’t resonate at all. It was no Cambridge, England.
Maybe Spanish-speaking people seem often sympathetic to other nationalities and other foreigners.
I won’t say where I’m working. But abroad and have colleagues coming from a lot of different countries, and the few ones from Spain are great, and often want to go out afterwards (unlike certain others).
That is a great city.
Only the blue line is open at night in Chicago, owing to the fact that is the blue line that connects to O’Hare.
Allow me to describe the many reasons the blue line sucks.
First, because it is open 24/7 many homeless people live on the blue line, especially in the winter.
Second, because it is Chicago, there are sure to be negros on it.
Third, there is no express service. It takes 90 minutes to get from downtown Chicago to O’Hare. There should be a direct, nonstop rail link like you can find in many European and Asian cities. The Rahmfather to his credit is trying to get one built.
Fourth, if you start on the red line boarding the blue line requires an out of station transfer–or switching to the abysmally slow brown line.
Fifth, the airport station is too far away from the actual terminals, so you’re looking at another 10 minutes of walking to get to the terminal.
Sixth, you cannot drink alcohol on the “L” at all, almost certainly because of the aforementioned rambunctious negros. The METRA commuter rail system after all does allow alcohol.
The blue line is, in other words, only acceptable for losers. When a limo to O’Hare only costs $70 from downtown why on Earth would you subject yourself to such a degrading and slow transport option?
I’m not disputing that atrocities took place and were widespread, just the ten million figure (and some of the torture porn).
The atrocities were the sort of thing that nobody would’ve cared about in the 17th century or earlier, but unfortunately pathological altruism was invented in the 18th century.
In fact we can date the invention of pathological altruism exactly. In 1688 four Quakers signed an antislavery petition in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Thus was germinated the seed that threatens to annihilate us.
graffiti is low level civil war
It’s just a product of Western Europe’s appallingly soft stance on crime and often has nothing to do with the invaders.
My German cousins were into graffiti as teenagers for instance.
This is why I think the psychological reasoning behind Holocaust denialism (defined as contending the Germans did not kill millions of Jews) is misguided. If the Shoah didn’t actually happen, the left would have simply moved on to make other atrocities front and central like the Belgian hi-jinks in the Congo. The only solution is a mental strengthening like Bowden proposed in Credo. We have to ‘step over the prospect of being sorry.’
https://www.counter-currents.com/2012/05/credo-a-nietzschean-testament/
First time commenter here — but have read the articles (and comments too!) for a couple of months.
I appreciate Anatoly’s articles as they give, in my opinion, in interesting Russian/American perspective on many topics. I find myself in agreement with a lot of what he’s writing. Disagreements with a few things, too (like his faith in the transhumanism/life extension thing).
This article is very much to the point — « socialist dump » : I could not agree more with this extremely concise yet accurate summary of Brussels as I saw it as well last time I was there.
I wonder what Anatoly would have to say of Paris (from which my distant origins are, on one side of my ancestry). In comparison, based
on personal observations during my last brief stay there a few months ago, Brussels looks like a delightful place. The mix of urine smell
with general decay at the Gare de Lyon’s rental car exit reminded me of Nairobi’s airport.
As sad at it sounds, I nonetheless think that it’s way past midnight for the European civilization, at least in its western version. For the eastern side, I do not share the optimism of many WNs who see it as a last bastion of white civilization — at least as long as those nations remain pegged to the EU for the sake of handouts, it’s a losing proposition.
I’m not sure there’s any place to hide because all of that is first and foremost the White Man’s own doing. Most of our European contemporaries seem content with the current situation — and even if they’re not, their level of discontent is not sufficient to risk being accused of WN-ism/xenophobia/anti-jooism/islamophobia/etc.
I did not know that Mercator was from
there. Thanks for having shared the info.
A woman in Cali today was arrested by ICE for running a human smuggling ring. Mexicans gonna Mexican.
But anyway, this has caused outrage on Leftists social media because… well I’m not really sure why they are so angry. Presumably they aren’t now in favor of human smuggling rings.
In reaction to the video posted of the arrest, one twitter liberal commented: “Heart breaking. This isn’t what the America I grew up in and loved!! This looks more like the streets of Moscow. Scary there is such hateful people in the Government that can break up families like this. There has to be a better way! #resist #BorderPatrolAbuse #whereisAmerica”
(emphasis added)
Can’t make this stuff up, folks.
That’s what I thought but I was overlooking the obvious: South America.
Argentina, Chile and Paraguay are great places for whites to move.
Isn’t there significant Mestizo immigration to Argentina? Why would one want to go there if one’s bothered by Mexicans?
Paraguay has been pretty mixed for a long time, iirc its early 19th century dictator Dr Francia even made interracial marriage mandatory (wonder if such laws will make a comeback).
I suppose Chile isn’t that bad (pretty mixed as well though).
Uruguay seems quite nice, at least for now, mostly European, and the church doesn’t have that much power there.
All this talk about fleeing somewhere gets on my nerves though…this defeatism is just ugly.
“I’ve vowed never to have a Hungarian boyfriend, or even to settle down in my own country”.
Orban is #Winning
Metropolises are interesting to tour when they have ancient, monumental buildings. In my opinion. Using this metric, Paris, Moscow or Saint Petersbourg easily beat London or Amsterdam. There is something to be said about the concentration of political and economic power: it certainly does generate more of such buildings over the centuries. So London and Amsterdam created unsurpassed wealth in the modern era and before the scourge of postmodernism: but apparently weak monarchies means you only get to see that in mid-sized buildings, mansions, apartment buildings, or private homes that are surely nice but can’t be toured or seen easily anyway.
For sure monumentalism can feel alienating, but is inescapable if you want to project an image of strength and greatness, I guess (no doubt Hitler’s Welthauptstadt Germania was motivated by similar considerations, hypertrophied in this case). Anyway if you’re just a tourist passing by you typically enjoy the vista, perspectives and visits of what are/were important world cities. Not much time to feel alienated.
I agree that Spanish or Italian cities are the most pleasant to live in, and it’s true even from an architectural standpoint, even the lesser-known cities have lots of beautiful monuments offering a nice compromise: impressive but not hypertrophied, and most often built with taste. In the historical centers, anyway.
Karlin is wrong, Mercator is not from Brussels. Just read his wikipedia article.
Boston is very pleasant, very white too. Always wanted to see Charkeston SC, and a few other Confederate cities.
What is remarkable is the Arab influx since Cameron weakenend visa restrictions, whole swathes of Mayfair and Knightsbridge now have a distinct Arabic flavour now. I gather they used to go to Lebanon but don’t anymore because the Sunni Shia thing. Anyway hopefully Brexit is the start on the path to preserving our nation.
A woman in Cali today was arrested by ICE for running a human smuggling ring. Mexicans gonna Mexican.
It took me a while to figure this out. For what earthly reason, I asked myself, would a human smuggling ring involving Mexicans be organised in Colombia (which, as everyone knows, is where Cali is)?
Eventually I realised that GW being American, Cali must be American lingo for “California”.
From what I can find, the population of Congo in 1950 was 12 million (today: about 80 million). The Second Congo War 1998-2003 (and on) with twenty five involved ‘armed groups’ apparently killed 5.4 million, including starvation and disease, of a much larger population. So 10 million holocausted in an earlier era seems fanciful. Issues of counting apart, Congo might well not have had 10 million inhabitants in the first place.
On the other hand, premodern societies (and Congo definitely was one even in the 1950s) often had fluctuating populations. It’s possible for example that the population was higher in 1880 than in 1950.
The atrocities were spread over a period of two decades or more. This inflates the numbers because you can kill a small percentage of the population in a Malthusian society every year without it leading to population decline. The more the population declines, the faster the recovery.
However, the numbers add up over the years. So eventually you’ll end up having killed half the population without the population having declined more than, say, 25%.
But I’m also growing a bit skeptical of the higher end estimates, because apparently new diseases were introduced from other parts of Africa and the world, and they must have killed more people than violence.
On the other hand, population decline due to the introduction of new diseases can be fairly permanent: it took centuries for American Indians to recover, and Europeans also needed perhaps a century to recover from the Great Pestilence in the Middle Ages. So we’re back at the point I made in the first paragraph: maybe there were more people to kill in the 1880s.
Still, the number of victims was probably lower, I’d expect at most a few millions.
I used to live on the blue line.
Many of the stops are above ground, that would be hard. My stop was below ground, never saw them there. I don’t recall seeing them anywhere there, tbh. That was in the late 90s, Chicago has cleaned up since then.
That would be the red line, aka “the ghetto line.”
More like 45 minutes. Faster than traffic.
Correct, though not everyone has to do that.
LOL, and you are a winner?
There may be some mud genetics in in Paraguay, Argentina and Chile, but I don’t care about that stuff. What matters is that the people there all consider themselves white and mostly look white. Nobody in those countries is fighting “white privilege”.
And the dogs.
I don’t think most people in Paraguay look white, it’s clearly a Mestizo nation (even that dictator with the German name Stroessner they once had was half-Amerindian iirc).
But I can see where you’re coming from, compared to parts of Western Europe Latin America might eventually be much more pleasant. One can only hope they won’t become infected by US-style SWJism and identity politics.
Sure, but our Cubans and Puerto Ricans were mostly mixing with the Russian and Polish people, not the Anglos (or the one German guy, who was in the Anglo group).
More observations: educated Latin Americans really enjoy Russian literature, much more so than do educated Anglos. They treat rum like Russians or Poles treat vodka. Their society is probably organized not wildly unlike that of pre-Commie eastern Europe, though their “peasants” are a different color than the educated classes.
Argentina is what America would have been like if the Italian mass migration wasn’t stopped and the country became totally swamped by poor Italian peasants whose numbers prevented their assimilation and adoption of Anglo values. It’s not an unpleasant place, with good food (Italian wine tradition plus Western beef-grilling) and Euro architecture, but much poorer and more corrupt than the USA, and with a history of fascist-lite demagogic politics.
There are fewer Mestizos in Argentina than in the USA, though they are moving south from places like Paraguay and Bolivia.
This is trivial, won’t have any consequences, but: non-whites don’t belong in Europe. I don’t know how or whether it will be solved, but on the gut level, it is so.
Blood & soil is what ultimately matters.
iirc many white Argentinians do have some Amerindian ancestry though, the 19th century immigration wave was disproportionately male, so many of them married partly indigenous women.
They also had quite a few black slaves in Buenos Aires in the early 19th century, but supposedly they “disappeared” in some rather drastic and unpleasant way (iirc one claim is that the Argentinians sent them off to die as cannon fodder in some war).
But yes, on the whole it’s probably not that bad a country. Their tinpot nationalism (las Malvinas son nuestras) is a bit silly though.
I don’t think most people in Paraguay look white, it’s clearly a Mestizo nation
I think he’s confusing Paraguay with Uruguay which is the most “European” country in South America (90%), whereas Paraguay is 20% European.
So far no one seems to have mentioned what Brussels is most famous for, at least in my day:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis#/media/File:Bruxelles_Manneken_Pis.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis
This is an interesting written post. But I have to disagree with the idea London doesn’t have impressive buildings, or that they are less than in Paris, Moscow and Peter.
Just walk around in Westminster in London – and you have all the sense of power of the British empire.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@51.5065045,-0.1290499,3a,75y,260.74h,101.59t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sT_575XGc1teCUjz2Fblmog!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
I’m not sure about the Congo, but putting the Rwandan Genocide at the feet of the Belgians (usually they are blamed), I find to be hilariously funny. What now?! Belgians invented African tribes and set them against each other and then mind-controlled them to kill each other, right after they left?! Ha, ha, ha, ha……
I mean I understand Rwandans trying to get along and externalize the blame, but it is really laughable when whites blame the Belgians. Because, whether they realize it or not, they are basically saying blacks are wet robots programmable by whites.
To continue in this vein for a bit: Recall that in 1950 Congo (12m inhabitants) had been a Belgian colony for 40 years and would have had some access to modern medicine, modern agriculture and trade, etc.
The Congo Free State population estimate (20 million) seems to come from two sources: a census of 10 million in 1919 (when it had become Belgian Congo) and a government report that said half the population had died. On the other hand, Wikipedia notes that Africa had an estimated population of 90-130 million at the time of the Congo Free State. Would Congo have held 15-25% of the total population of Africa (20m)? It seems unlikely. Thus I wouldn’t find it odd if the population before colonization was substantially lower than 12 million.
It’s also a bit interesting to note that King Leopold II was 215 million francs in debt when Belgium took over. Congo doesn’t seem to have been a very good investment overall.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Congo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_II_of_Belgium
actually, comparing London and other capital cities the difference has been noticed, see for example this passage by Piers Brandon also trying to find some of the reasons behind it:
https://books.google.fr/books?id=eVnyQr2avocC&lpg=PP1&dq=the%20decline%20and%20fall%20of%20the%20british%20empire&hl=fr&pg=PA249#v=onepage&q&f=false
Colonies in general were money losing operations.
Replacing Catholic Poles by Moslems and Untouchables fleeing India will be an improvement?
Belgian waffles also come from Belgium. And chocolates. I had amazing waffles in Antwerp. The chocolates came from Brussels. Some beer is brewed the British way.
Don’t forget that the NSA has been reading every email, web search etc. since the late 1990s.
During the same time frame, crimes based on mere (unwitting) POSSESSION of forbidden content (e.g. “child porn”, “terrorist” materials, etc.) were introduced and became increasingly draconian while normal legal defenses (e.g. ignorance of the fact that the file was automatically downloaded by a browser) were disallowed.
While child pornography is a real problem and is certainly abhorrent, the precise legal STRUCTURE of these new federal and state “possession” offenses seems custom-designed to entrap innocent individuals by placing incriminating files on their computers.
It used to be said that “No man is a hero to his valet.” Similarly, no man is a hero to the NSA minion reading his emails and web searches.
Were you able to see Antwerp? Perhaps the locals have more pride there.
First Congolese would have to take over social studies and history departments at universities and own the media.
The choice is not Poles or Muslims and Indian Untouchables, but Poles and Muslims and Indian Untouchables. British Pro-EU elite wants them all.
Well perhaps there is some argument. But I find buildings in London very impressive. And in central London feel more impressed than of Peter, for all its beautiful palaces. Not than Moscow though.
I don’t want to interrupt the mood of amity here but I will note that while the majority of Polish women are quite attractive they suffer in many instances, in my opinion at any rate, in comparison with Russians or Ukrainians; I suppose this is probably the effect of Germanic admixture or proximity.
I suppose so. I also think, though, that without 1960s-era politicocultural developments the Latinos would have integrated fairly well into our society.
Such super ugly shit as the Moscow architectural appearance
http://moscowalk.ru/images/2014/progulki/View_of_the_Kremlin/view_red15.jpg
compared to St. Petersburg?!
http://cat-cat-cat.ru/photo/2015/01/pano-7-1-.jpg
Ha.
In Moscow there are some beautiful buildings, but the city itself is ugly.
In St. Petersburg there are some ugly buildings, but the city itself is beautiful.
… Brussels? The horror, the horror – as those ghastly photos prove …
OTish
What is the guy/girl in the mural in white and wearing earrings doing to the woman next to him/er? Some kind of foot massage?
Peter is a lot more beautiful, elegant, sophisticate. But that’s not what he is talking about. He is talking about impressive and monumental power in his argument. London is more like Moscow. London – not so elegant, not uniform style, not even so beautiful architecture, often very ugly – but it has feeling of a vast power and conquest of the world.